National Affairs: Second Look

Despite the catcalls from labor and the non-Communist left, Henry Wallace still seemed to have plenty of friends left. Two-polls last week found a surprising Wallace backing in the key states of New York and Massachusetts.

In New York, Pollster George Gallup reported, Wallace would now get between 13% and 18% of the total vote, depending on which Republican ran against Harry Truman.* In Massachusetts, a Boston Globe straw vote gave Wallace 11% of the total and made the state “a 50-50 proposition” for the G.O.P. for the first time since Calvin Coolidge.

Quite obviously, not all of these straw voters were Communists. Wallace could apparently count on a sizable bloc of voters who believed in a protest vote—and to hell with the consequences. The real test would be their willingness to translate their polled opinion on to the ballot next November.

*Taking its own poll in Manhattan, the Communist Daily Worker happily rounded up 5,092 for Wallace, also reported that it had found 3,231 opposed, 888 undecided.